Blog - How to display a handmade rug on the wall

Here at Cultural Cloth we surround ourselves with beautiful handmade textiles in our home decor. Some of our textiles are museum quality handmade
heirlooms that deserve preservation and expensive protection, others are
beautiful to us because they are worn and tattered. They remind us of someone, somewhere or some time.

Last week a customer in the shop expressed interest in using
one of our larger Moroccan boucherourite rugs as art on her wall. She thought that the rugs had so much visual
detail that she was convinced that she would never get tired of looking at it.

Since the rug was so big, she also thought
that it could be fairly affordable way to decorate a large space but she was
concerned that figuring out how to hang it on the wall could get expensive. She wondered if we had any ideas?

We talked for a while and here is our list of ideas:

The easiest, fastest and cheapest way to hang a
boucherouite is to simply use bulletin board push pins. The shaggy pile covers the push pins. We do this all the time in the shop since we
are always moving things around. The
downside is that you mark your wall and potentially cause a weakness in the handmade
textile.

Mary Anne also worked with a customer who had a
very heavy rug and the customer was concerned that the tack strip would not be
sturdy enough to hold the rug. She
painted a piece of wood slat and nailed several nails that were at least 1 inch long from the back of
the board. The nails were be spaced
4-6 inches apart. The customer then
nailed the slat board to the wall and hung the rug from the nails. Again, it is possible that the nails could
cause a weakness in the handmade textile.

We have also used Velcro® to hang textiles. In this video, the contractor demonstrates how to hang a rug with hook and loop fastener, Velcro. This solution doesn’t mar the wall or pierce
the textile. It is possible that the
glue could adhere to the textile but it is easy and fast. The best tip of the video is towards the end when he advises to sandwich the
hook and loop sides of the Velcro together before hanging so that you don’t
have to perform all sorts of precise measurements. Another tip, we learned the
hard way is to fold the textile in half and start in the middle working to the
end so that you don’t have any gaps. You might need an extra set of hands to
hang the rug. The Velcro website says
that a 4” x 2” piece of Velcro will hold 8 pounds. Buy Velcro that specially
made to affix to fabric.